


Before High Tide

by Tyger



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: AU, AU (complete), Angst, Death, Gen, implied gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-01
Updated: 2010-12-01
Packaged: 2017-10-19 00:35:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/194945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyger/pseuds/Tyger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roxas I'm <i>bored</i>," comes a voice from underneath the nearby grove of palm-trees Roxas has been trying <i>very hard</i> to ignore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before High Tide

**Author's Note:**

> For [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/au_bingo/profile)[**au_bingo**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/au_bingo/) prompt: castaways

        "Roxas I'm _bored_ ," comes a voice from underneath the nearby grove of palm-trees Roxas has been trying _very hard_ to ignore. Trying and never quite succeeding, no matter how hot the sun overhead - which is very, makes his head swim like the worst of the summer heat-waves back home even though it's only an hour or two after dawn - or how tiring the work - which is the sort of back-breaking labour he'd seen happen, occasionally, from the corner of his eye, but never - _never_ \- expected to have to carry out himself, but how can you expect something like this to happen? How can you? No one can, that's for sure, and if _he_ doesn't get these few washed-up chests full of supplies up above the tide line... well, if he doesn't it won't get done, because it's not like... it's not like...

        "Shut up, Axel," he snaps back, keeps shoving his current box through the sand, over to where the first he got up the beach had left a trail of mostly-flattened sand. Re-using that is infinitely easier than trying to forge a new one. Infinitely easier.

        "Aww, don't be like that," comes Axel's voice again, light and teasing, and even though Roxas knows _why_ he's doing it, or at least he's pretty sure he does, it's still _really annoying_ , because doesn't he _understand_ what kind of situation they're in? (But he does, of course. Probably better than Roxas.)

        "C'mon, come over here for a while, take a break! It's hot out, you know!"

        "I hadn't noticed," Roxas mumbles under his breath, uses his frustration to push the box harder. And there, got it to the tracks. It's easier, now, barely takes him ten minutes to push it the rest of the way up above the tide line.

        "Roxas," Axel says, when he gets back to the top. Serious, now, like Roxas has rarely heard him speak before. It's more worrying than Roxas really wants to admit. "Come rest a while," he continues, in that same tone.

        "But the boxes-" Roxas starts. Stops, at a look from those green eyes, too-bright and glassy.

        "Won't be any good to us if you pass out from heatstroke," Axel points out, and Roxas hates that he's right, hates that he's _always_ right, about this sort of thing.

        He walks over, grudgingly, and sinks to the sand in the shade next to him.

        "How's the leg?" he asks.

        "Never better," Axel lies, like Roxas hadn't seen white bone poking out, before he'd set it, as best he could under the circumstances. It'd been the first time in his life he'd been grateful his father is a surgeon. Was a surgeon.

        They sit there in silence, for a while, before Roxas starts to shake. Which. _Damn_ it, this is why he was trying to keep busy. If he's busy, if he's working himself to the bone and trying to ignore then sun and Axel's comments, then he won't have time to _think_ , won't have time to _realise_ -

        "They're not going to find us, are they? We're going to _die_." He doesn't want to die. He really _really_ doesn't want to die. Doesn't want to become a floating, bloated corpse, doesn't want to rot away _doesn't want to!_

        "You're not going to die, I promise." says Axel, reaching up and running a hand through his hair softly. Even though he's running a high enough fever he's probably delirious, the way he looks... Roxas can actually believe him. Can place his trust in that surety, even when his faith in everything else has dried up and blown away.

 

        Doesn't realise until too late Axel never made any promises about _himself_.


End file.
